How Alfred Hitchcock shot the murder in Psycho, 1960.
The scene runs 45 seconds. It took 78 camera setups, 52 cuts and a whole week to film, a third of the shooting schedule. It was storyboarded with the designer Saul Bass.
“I think the murder in the bathtub, coming out of the blue, that was about all.”
The blood was chocolate syrup. The dark brown held up on camera where bright colors washed out, and a plastic squeeze bottle, then a recent invention, gave it a realistic drip and splash.
The brand is usually given as Bosco. Marli Renfro, Janet Leigh’s body double, was in the shower and remembers a can of Hershey’s.
“They had a can of Hershey’s syrup, which was watered down, and that’s what they used for blood. But they had to dribble it around me and on me.”
Hitchcock said the draining blood would have been too “repulsive” in color.
One shot appears to show the blade entering her stomach. Alexandre O. Philippe, who made the documentary 78/52, explains how: “They put a little blood on the tip,” he says, “and then put it against her belly button, and then shot it in reverse.”
The rest is cutting. Editor George Tomasini removed four or five frames at one point so she seems to be slammed against the wall. The close-ups and swift edits imply the violence, and the body stays unmarked throughout.
The censors still balked at what they took for nudity. Leigh and her double wore moleskin patches.
Renfro was 21, and she worked seven days on this one scene. The hand clenching the curtain is hers.
For the sound of the knife, Hitchcock and his sound man laid out every kind of melon they could find and chose a casaba, which sounds denser and less hollow. It sounded even more realistic with a slab of steak mixed in.
The shot pulling back from Leigh’s eye took 26 takes. In the only usable one she took a breath, spotted too late to reshoot, so they cut back to the showerhead.